Instead of specifying Director VM address via --environment (-e) flag and a CA certificate via --ca-cert flag in subsequent commands, a local alias can be created for environment with bosh alias-env command.

bosh create-env command needs to remember resources it creates in the IaaS so that it can re-use or delete them at a later time. The deploy command stores current state of your deployment in a given state file (via --state flag) or implicitly in <manifest>-state.json file in the same directory as your deployment manifest.

This allows you to deploy multiple deployments with different manifests.

Do not delete state file unless you have already deleted your deployment (with bosh delete-env <manifest> or by manually removing the VM, disk(s), & stemcell from the IaaS). We recommend placing the deployment state file and the deployment manifest under version control and saving changes any time after running the deploy or delete commands.

bosh delete-env command idempotently deletes all previously created IaaS resources (VMs, disks, and stemcells). The command will try its best to not return an error, for example it ignores resources that were already deleted and retries on certain operations.